The Irish government is preparing payments for Ukrainians to return home and plans to wind down their placement program in the country
Temporary protection for Ukrainians in European countries was initially an emergency mechanism that gave people the opportunity to quickly obtain housing, basic financial support and the right to legal residence after leaving the country due to war. Over time, such programs began to move from the regime of emergency assistance to the review stage, where the terms of validity, the amount of budget expenditures and new conditions for access to state support come to the fore. The Irish government announced the preparation of decisions regarding the return of Ukrainians home, the reduction of placement programs and a change in the approach to payments to those who provided shelter.
What the Minister of Migration announced
As reported by The Times, on April 20, Irish Minister of Migration Colm Brophy announced that the government is working on special payments for Ukrainians who agree to return to Ukraine, and is also preparing to wind down the state placement program.
Brophy’s statement suggests that the government has already moved from general discussions to preparing a specific schedule according to which the return program should be implemented over the next 12 months. So, we are not talking about a separate proposal that appeared in the public space without further extension, but a package of decisions that the authorities plan to submit for approval.
A separate part of the new approach should be financial assistance to Ukrainians who decide to leave Ireland for their country of origin. According to available information, people using shelter can receive from 2,500 euros per person to 10,000 euros per family, and it is these amounts that are being considered within the framework of the return mechanism.
The message does not provide additional details on the criteria by which recipients will be determined, the timeframe for payments and whether this assistance will be tied to a specific residence status. At the same time, the announced figures give an idea of the scale of the program that the government is preparing as a tool to encourage departure from Ireland.
Who will be affected by the reduction of state support
Along with the preparation of payments, the Irish government plans to cancel the state support program for approximately 16 thousand Ukrainians who arrived in the country at the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion. In this case, we are talking about people who were among the first large waves of forced departure and used the assistance system deployed in response to the humanitarian crisis.
This step shows that the authorities are moving towards a gradual reduction of the mechanisms that have been in place since the first months of the Great War. The government is actually moving away from the model of long-term state provision of accommodation for some Ukrainians and at the same time launching another instrument – cash assistance for return.
In addition to decisions on payments and accommodation, broader changes related to the Temporary Protection Directive are also being discussed in Ireland. According to the information provided in the publication, the government is considering either abolishing this mechanism or other options that would limit the scope of support for Ukrainian refugees.
Among the possible approaches is the preservation of assistance only for people from the most affected regions of Ukraine. Such a proposal indicates that further policy can no longer be based on the same approach to all citizens of Ukraine who are under temporary protection, but on selection by territory of origin and the degree of damage to the region by war.
How payments for Irish families will change
Another block of decisions concerns Irish citizens who hosted Ukrainians in their own homes and received compensation from the state for this. Payments for such households are planned to be reduced from 600 to 400 euros, after which the program should be canceled completely.
Given this sequence of actions, the government is changing two elements of the system at once: it is reducing support for those who provided housing, and at the same time preparing to reduce state placement for some of the Ukrainians themselves. As a result, the restructuring covers the entire chain of assistance – from accommodation to the financial mechanisms that ensured its operation.
According to media reports, as of February 2022, more than 125 thousand Ukrainians have received temporary protection in Ireland. This shows that the country has accepted a significant number of people after the start of a full-scale war, and therefore any decisions to change the rules of support have a wide practical impact. The government’s announced intentions mark a transition to a new phase of public policy, in which the priority reception system gives way to programs of cost reduction, review of assistance status, and financial incentives for return.
